THE TRUTH COMES OUT
  "I was servicing Falmouth Port Authority's dredgersub, the one they call
Trelawney after someone famous in their history, two days ago, and ..." said the
workman.
  "Brrrm! Dredgersubs! I was hoping to hear about something else for a bit!
after we hauled two of them over Shap and Beattock and the Grampians." said
Optimus.
  "What did the Navy call them? I didn't see them unsheeted." said the workman.
  "The smaller one, with the grab, is called `Nesse', I suppose after the lake
with the monster [Loch Ness in Scotland], and the big one, with the huge
untelescoping suction tube, is called `Pelargos', I suppose after a fictional
navy base called `Pelargir' in the book called `The Lord of the Rings'. I
suppose those names might be from something else, but my mind's still a bit
swimming after all that distance and mountains.' said Optimus.
  [312] "I was inside Trelawney, servicing him, and I noticed something a bit
wrong." said the workman, "When the screws that fasten the braincase cover on
have been tightened, after the mind has been programmed in by Wheeljack or
whoever, he puts drops of molten lead on each screw head and stamps into it an
Autobot badge, which looks like a stylized robot face, to check if anyone's been
tampering in there. How many seal stamps have you lot got for each size of
stamp?".
  "Several, but all those for each size were made from the same master." said
Optimus.
  "Well," said the workman,"I saw a loose seal like that on the floor of the
braincase compartment; I managed to pick it up without Trelawney noticing. I
also made plasticine impressions of four of the lead seals that were in place.
The loose seal was exactly like other seals that size; but the four that were in
place were all the same as each other but a but different from the loose seal.
The two lines like frowns on each side were further apart. And that bit that
looks like Megatron's mouth if you turn the badge round, its corners were
sharper. Someone else's been in there and resealed with a fake seal-stamp. What
for? To reprogram it to do what? And some of them have Hurlock D4SD sonars
mounted front and rear instead of the sonars that Smith & Malton's fitted.".
  "The Hurlock sonars could merely be for signalling. I better wait for firmer
evidence before starting a lot of wild ignorant public media sensationalizing
and speculation, in which my people and your firm lose out for no good purpose."
said Optimus, who however felt an unplaceable discomfort on hearing this.
  "We still best follow it up." said the workman, "Those general purpose
materials digester recyclers, like are in dredgersubs, and in some land-going
mobile refuse destructors like your Shockwave, and other places, are incredibly
efficient traceless consumers of most things put in them.".
  Meanwhile Shockwave did his job as efficiently as usual. He had got used by
now to transforming into a vehicle instead of into a giant flying ray gun like
in the stories. Council workmen, who had planned to remove some flytipped
rubbish the next day, changed their minds and rang Wernicke's for him instead.
He went to the place, where there was a big pile of flytipped rubbish. He drove
up to it and unfolded his right arm, which ended in a big clamshell grab. From
the back of the grab a wide roofed rack-conveyor ran up the arm and into a large
heavy-duty grinder on the front end of the machinery and storage compartments
that he carried behind his cab. He had shovelled up so much rubbish over the
months that he no longer examined it much. His grinder, made at Smith &
Malton's, reduced bicycles, bedsteads, furniture, cartons, fruit boxes,
mattresses, bags of rubbish, garden waste, household appliances, fly grubs, and
unwary rats and mice alike to fragments which he stored in big onboard tanks.
From time to time he stopped to let his load digest down a bit, until he
finished. He turned round to use his left arm, which has a powerful
untelescoping suction tube, to pick up the odd small missed bits. He went back
to Wernicke's, leaving the site clean. His digester recycler steadily consumed
the rubbish, oxidizing it in a type of fuel cell to make electricity and recover
metal oxides. He used some of this electricity himself, and used the rest to
make hydrocarbon fuel from water and carbon dioxide produced by the fuel cell.
Some call him `Super-totter', the ultimate scavenger. He washed his system
through into his recycler. By morning no trace was left of what went in.
  The place was an empty site in an area of terrace housing, where a large
corner pub had burned down several years before. There was a `Cadbury's
Chocolate' poster high up on a wall. Shockwave did not know it, but there two
stories ended, thanks to the betraying hand of false-friend drink. [see 300]

        [313] Two days later, Mr.Malton, who was in his office catching up with what
he called "paperwork, paperwork, the modern plague, interrupting me from real
work with metal", switched a radio on for the local news. It said: "... any
information about Paul Smith, aged 14, who failed to return home two days ago.
He was recently sacked from school for troublemaking and criminalism. A tramp
known as `Catfood Joe' is also sought in connection with this enquiry, as Paul
Smith was seen with him on the day he disappeared ... Three people in a car were
hurt in a pileup at ...". Mr.Malton remembered Paul Smith, who kept stealing
tools and threatening other boys until he had to be kept out of metalworking
class. And that tramp's name turning up again like a bad penny. The news and the
weather forecast finished. Yet again someone knocked on his office door; this
time, unexpectedly, it was a policeman carrying a videotape.
  "I'm from Birmingham CID." said the policeman, "Can we talk somewhere private
for a while? Have you got a television with a video here, or will you come to
the station to see what's on this tape?".
  The old familiar uneasy feeling arose suddenly and strong at the back of
Mr.Malton's brain. "I've got one in the next room. What's happened? Security
videocamera caught someone thieving?" he asked.
  "No, more serious. It involves something that you may have made." said the
policeman.
  "Lets see it then." said Mr.Malton, with a feeling that danger was looming.
  As Mr.Malton put the tape into the video, the policeman said: "This is a copy
of a tape found eight days ago in a sunken wreck at one end of the M.O.D.
Hiddleston restricted area. It had been hidden or dropped between two pieces of
plating [see 301, 189]. At first it's just two people's aqualung dive recorded,
as you will see.". Mr.Malton switched on. The videotape's viewpoint moved at
about a knot through sunlit shallow sea past weeds and rocks. Fish swam by.
Sometimes it showed a scuba diver, with a big two-cylinder aqualung whose
regulator was covered by a large perforated metal `diffuser box' to break the
exhaled air bubbles up small so they would be much less visible on the surface.
The soundtrack was largely intake hiss and exhalation noise from what sounded
like the camera operator's aqualung and one other. Mr.Malton's uneasiness
persisted and strengthened as the recorded dive continued. Then the video showed
what looked like some sort of small unmanned seabed listening station.
  "Now watch this." said the policeman. The formless uneasiness which had often
intermittently troubled Mr.Malton at last burst out of hiding and took fearsome
clear shape in his brain's daylight as with a metallic clang and a scared shout
of "Jim!!" the video's viewpoint swung round to show the scuba diver firmly held
in a large steel clamshell grab that Mr.Malton recognized all too well. The
diver's bottom and legs and the rear ends of his cylinders stuck out from
between the grab's teeth; his left arm stuck out of the grab's right hinge
corner. The diver vanished inside as the grab jerked forwards once and shut with
a hollow `clommp'. The viewpoint followed a bulge which passed down a covered
conveyor along the underside of the grab-arm and vanished into a large
rounded-ended cylindrical hull. "It got his mate; he managed to stay cool and
video it in case he could show it as evidence." said the policeman.
  "Ye catfish! So that's it! The dredgersubs and other intelligent machines I
sell, I have them programmed to absolutely refuse any orders to act
antipersonnel! Someone found how to override it! Down goes an anonymous bulge,
like a pond-dredging duck catching and swallowing a frog! All too efficiently
traceless!" Mr.Malton exclaimed, pressing the video's `freeze frame' button.
  The policeman said: "Yes, someone has. Now, I suppose, we've got to find
whether that sub was being driven by a man in its control compartment, or acting
on its own mind. The amount of fishing harbour authorities, some much favouring
inshore fishermen against scuba divers in the disputes over shellfish catching
that occur, that have got these subs! First Hurlock lethal-beam sonars, now
these, a new device tips the balance when the divers thought they were winning.
And I suppose you'll claim you're not guilty, like the maker of a car that runs
someone over, or a firm that makes army tanks and guns used in a war that people
get killed in. Trouble is, these subs were made for traceless disposal of stuff,
and cars and even army tanks aren't. Their minds get like their human
associates, which are mostly inshore fishermen who think their fishing areas are
their property, or rough-minded dockers.".
  "One of my men serviced Falmouth Harbour's grab-dredgersub and found that its
braincase cover lead seals were fakes. One real seal was loose in the bottom of
the compartment. I'll let the tape run, I may recognize which 'sub it is on the
tape." said Mr.Malton.
  "Yes, do! This explains much! All the traceless group scuba diver
disappearances that there've been!" said the policeman.
  Mr.Malton rewound the tape a bit, to step back over the bit jumped over by
stopping and starting, then pressed `play'. Again the bulge which was a sport
scuba diver found at a wrong place and time passed the grab-arm's hydraulic rams
and universal base joint and vanished into the steel hull. "Lobster pot
fishermen moan that they can't do anything legally about scuba divers: so first
chance the backlash and they do it illegally." said the policeman, "Some of us
scuba dive, and know about these disputes. Many divers now only dive inland or
abroad, to avoid - what I now know is these things. If even abroad'll be safe
for long, an American firm's starting to make them, with various variations. I
don't suppose the Government'll ban dredgersubs, they're too useful recovering
energy and metals from the seabed. The sooner a few prosecutions, the better!".
He remembered some naval and ex-naval men's disciplinarianism towards diving,
and the armed forces tendency to think of casual peacetime civilian underwater
and other trespassers in the same way as wartime guarding against enemy
commandos, and the last two dredgersubs he had sent off, Nesse and Pelargos for
Scapa Flow navy base in the Orkneys, and the naval anchor symbols stamped into
the lead seals over their braincase cover screw heads by a naval electronics man
who had installed their minds, refusing Wheeljack and his usual Autobot symbol
stamps, and how popular the Orkneys were also with sport scuba divers, and some
officials' complaints that sport scuba divers' adventurousness sometimes led
them into places where there were things that the Ministry of Defence would
prefer civilians not to see and casually talk and write about ...
  "Aye." said Mr.Malton, "An American firm's making and selling Hurlock-type
lethal-beam sonars legally over there, allegedly to use against seals and sharks
that damage nets, I read. Scuba diving lobby don't like it at all. Even if I
shut down now and burnt all my drawings, other firms'd make them, now the basic
design work's been done and is public knowledge.". The video's angle of view
widened and moved along the sub's hull to its rear end's ominous sonar blister
and impersonally efficient-looking power gear of propeller spinning between four
hydroplanes. On the hull between the hydroplanes was the code `DS2'.
  "Oh yes!" said Mr.Malton, "It's one of two I sold to the Navy [see 173-174].
Their Captain Buckley was in charge of it with me.".
  "The Navy!" said the policeman in dismay, knowing what it was like for
civilian police enquiring among uncooperative government bodies with things to
hide, "If I go to question someone, say `X', the sentry at the gate won't let me
in, nor will he call X to the gate, but says that X is under orders to stay at
his post. If I ignore the sentry and go in, he aims his rifle and calls for
help. When I come back with an entry warrant and a subpoena, X has been moved
away, and the sentry's under orders not to tell civilians where X now is. So I
go for another subpoena, for ... , etc etc, forget it. And, long before this,
some M.O.D. base on the south coast, various reports offshore from it of diver
deaths, mass deaths of fish, divers hearing strange `sonic noises'. Some secret
ultrasonic beam weapon, I bet, and the quick way with intruders, and `dead men
tell no tales' to save a lot of interrogating and report-writing to find what
secret he saw. Back go armed forces guards to that mentality, given half a
chance.".
  The video continued, showing a close-up of part of the sub's hull, as if the
cameraman was clinging to it. Sea rushed past. After a while a shipwreck loomed
up. Then the view span in random directions at sea and weed-grown wreck, and a
brief but all too clear shot of another scuba diver, whose aqualung-air and
blood ran to waste through deep cuts as the naval recycler digester equipped
dredgersub swallowed him to be disposed of to stop news of a secret sonar
listening post from reaching unauthorized civilians. Then the view settled to
the inside of a narrow cleft between steel plates and a rear view of a lobster.
"Only more of that lobster, till the tape ran out. No point looking for the
camera's owner." said the policeman, getting up and switching the video off and
recovering the tape.
  "It may not mean much," said Mr.Malton a bit faintly, "but one of my men
reported that when [see 252-259] he went to service Red Wharf in Anglesey's grab
dredgersub (they call it Big Jim, that's the one that rescued three children
that time [see 261-262]), it told him of an odd dream it had had (electronic
intelligent brains dream like people's brains, to `sweep and tidy' themselves)
that it was on land like a man, career in the Navy, discharged (he called it
`sacked') for becoming a year too old, then he was a TV repairman in Taunton,
till back to the sea at last.".
  "Captain Hurlock! [see 198]" the policeman exclaimed, "That's <his> life! I
saw the records of when he was interrogated. He was hard disciplinarian against
people going on or under the sea for anything except work and armed forces
operations, and sport scuba divers treated as enemy frogmen for `sabotaging
their shellfishing livelihood'. There's likely a deal of <him> in that sub's
mentality. I bet that once he'd altered one sub's mentality to his liking, he
sent copies of its mind about on computer disks. Disappearances. It starts to
fit. Crabhaven was safe (except for the fishermen threatening) until Captain
Hurlock bought a dredgersub off you; although we also found some Hurlock sonars
there, and another time there a diver survived a Hurlock sonar attack [see
192-193] on a group of four. And that Big Jim at Red Wharf, not so far from
there to Puffin Island, where 12 divers and two inflatables disappeared, nor to
Llanfairfechan where 11 divers disappeared [see 182]. Always the fishermen
claimed it was currents or bad weather or something.".
  "It may have been, I suppose." said Mr.Malton, "Big Jim that time saved those
three children, it was in the paper. They went adrift in a playboat. He carried
them back very carefully in his grab, like a wolf carrying its cubs, since he
had nowhere else for them to ride on or in him. And another time that grab bit a
cabin cruiser to pieces when its owner started robbing pots and nets.".
  "OK, some Navy backroom weapons expert overrode the inhibitions that Optimus's
people designed into those things' minds, and gave it the armed forces secret
area guard mentality instead. Perhaps Captain Hurlock did the same to fishing
port 'subs. Perhaps Captain Hurlock helped the navy with it, or even vice
versa." said the policeman.
  "We and Optimus's people made them for materials recovery and underwater work.
As regards what the Navy did with those two (they are called DS1 and DS2), if
you aren't likely to get far investigating among secret naval people, I am less
likely. I took what precautions I and Optimus thought necessary to stop
civilians from using them antipersonnel; but the armed forces have different
ideas sometimes, and armaments makers face the usual moral dilemma. I will
cooperate in any investigations." said Mr.Malton.
  "Why didn't you fasten the braincase cover on in a way so they can't open it
to tamper inside and reseal it at no more effort than forging a seal-stamp?" the
policeman asked.
  "Sometimes <we> have to go in their braincases, to check things. It seems we
better start putting locks on them, that only we and Optimus's people have keys
to. And reprogram back existing subs, those owned by civilians, if their owners
cooperate, if they are the culprits; I don't suppose the Navy'll let us near
theirs. The two 'subs we just delivered to Thurso for the Navy at Scapa Flow,
the Navy didn't let us program their minds in, but a naval electronic weapons
officer did it, I saw his badges. Who's seen that video so far? If it's been
broadcast, everybody concerned including the dredgersubs themselves'll know and
be wary. Likely, as often, mere publicity'll scare troublemakers off, same as
when Captain Hurlock's `sea patrol' were caught." said Mr.Malton.
  "Yes, it was shown on a special ITV program last night." said the policeman,
"And, from what I know about them, there's not much chance of catching one at a
refuelling point. They can live off dredgings for months. Two of them can
perform routine servicing and minor repairs on each other. They're as clever as
me, no hope of trapping them like lobsters or rabbits, and they're quite capable
of selling recovered metals to some dealer's boat that meets them at sea.
They're too independent minded for my liking.".
  "If they had too little mental independence, they'd be forever running back to
their owners with minor queries, like a computer language compiler that's foxed
if the user spells `integer' as `intger'." said Mr.Malton, "I repeat, Optimus
programmed them to refuse any orders to act antipersonnel. I'll tell my men to
take disk-copies of their minds when they can, so Optimus's people can examine
their memories safely away from them and their human associates: if your
suspicions are true.".
  [315] The BSAC's central committee, alarmed, held a special meeting. One
delegate said: "I never trusted those dredgersubs. Now we've got a videotape of
a dredgersub, probably the Navy's, swallowing two scuba divers. No report of two
divers disappearing round there, but not all divers tell someone else where
they're going. To be expected, those diffuser boxes on their regulators give me
the impression that they were being furtive. Anyway, divers shouldn't dive in
naval areas and busy port areas, too much risk from ordinary surface ships, for
a start. I expect that whoever found the camera cleaned it without letting
anyone guess from the marine growth on it how long it had been down there. They
had fullface masks that showed only the eyes, so no chance of recognizing them
by their faces. Perhaps someone'll recognize their equipment. Back go secret
area guards to shooting on sight, and people to enforcing death for theft,
legally or illegally, given half a chance, lobster fishermen calling us
`poachers' and getting triggerhappy with Hurlock sonars till evidence got out.
They won't ban dredgersubs, there's too much money in selling the metals they
recover. This'll likely get even more organizations wanting them as
self-refuelling underwater anti-intruder patrollers, and an endless succession
of such tragedies until sea and large lake sport diving is impossible except in
a few reserved areas. And Hurlock sonars are legal in parts of the USA and some
other places: allegedly for use against seals and sharks that damage fishing
gear. I hope it won't get so bad that I'll actually welcome severe restrictive
anti-diver laws, so the hard types can do their diverbusting legally and
overtly. I'd rather be fined or imprisoned and have my gear seized, than be shot
or caught at sea and tracelessly disposed of.".
  "A survivor [see 268], like that one near Crabhaven when someone in a boat
ultrasonic-gunned four submerged divers?" said another,
  "Hardly. Those things consume their dredgings completely, except stone and the
like. Witnesses? None so far, except that camera. Once near Crabhaven something
submerged with a loud voice ordered three divers to get out of the water, same
day as five divers disappeared there at Dobbits Cleft and two further offshore.
As usual, the local people claimed it was currents. That was the first
disappearance there since Hurlock was arrested; the scare they got when that lot
of divers they tried to warn off turned out to be all cops, must have been
wearing off. That sub of theirs, they call it Aphanistor or Affy, it doesn't
exactly stay undercover! Quite often it acts as harbourmaster and gives orders
to people and boats that come into the harbour, like when it told a cabin
cruiser's crew to lock their diving gear away and it put a man on board who put
the harbour authority's seal on the diving gear lockers, and threatened to
`impound' the gear if the seals were found broken. (It had no legal power to.)
The matter returns to shellfish! The accusations centre on crab and lobster
`poaching'. Too many shellfishermen are after the same stocks, depleting them,
and we get the blame. For a long time we held them off, more or less, till new
inventions tip the balance, first Hurlock lethal-beam sonars, then these things.
If it is them, it could be just Hurlock sonars again, and currents etc. That was
a naval dredgersub on the videotape, and the secret area guard mentality we know
of: in the old days `unauthorized' divers in naval area were sometimes blown up
with a depth charge, since that was quicker than the official way. These silent
ultrasonic guns are a warning to be thankful for things that we take for
granted, such as that `guns go bang' and tell everybody near that they've been
used. I hope those silent electric nailguns called `Emperor Ming' don't get
everywhere, no bang, reload from a hardware store, recharge from the electricity
mains, so that `we are nailgunned on the surface, we are sonar-gunned below',
and diving gets impossible except in a few reserved areas. Some of them have
said: `We want the right to patrol our own sea, and to carry weapons, and to
arrest and seize boats and kit like freshwater water bailiffs have to protect
mere idle pleasure-angling, and to be able to control who sails or dives in our
fishing areas.". Overcrowding causes trouble. Now a new big sort of
sea-woodlouse, that's isopod crustaceans, have been swarming into these
overcrowded lobsterpots eating the baits first, now there's enough pot baits
around to support a breeding population of them. The truth will come out!
Strange! In H.G.Wells's story `The War of the Worlds', the Martians with their
gas and rayguns defeated all human armies for a while, until all the Martians
died of earthly illnesses, `slain by the tiniest creatures that God in his
wisdom thought to put on the Earth', i.e. by bacteria! Now all these highly
organized equipped determined lobster fishermen who think the sea's their own
have been defeated by being made to set far fewer pots by the orders of an enemy
an inch long! Now it's Nature who has backlashed! Now what happens to many of
them? Dole? Jobs on land? Become shellfish divers and join their enemies?".
  "Or go diver but stay friendly with the rest, twice as effective against us
because they can go underwater after us." said a member from Nottingham BSAC,
"We've had a case of that already! Some of us were diving near Filey, and 60
feet down four heavies in diving gear with fullface masks that only showed the
eyes, and local accents, jumped us ripping our masks off and turning our air off
and punching us. We had to surface, and they helped a surface boat party to pull
us on board and take all our kit and pulp us. Real commando frogman style
professional job it was. I reckon they'd have left us alone if they'd had to
wait for us to surface, they had work to be getting on with.".
  "That sub `Big Jim' that you mentioned, sometimes helps salvage divers, if it
gets a share of the proceeds." said one.
  "Likely after a time this trouble movement'll lose its momentum and fall into
internal disputes, they often do." said another, "Journalists and detectives
infiltrate them; also the old enemy of conspiracies, the member who starts `not
liking what's going on' and turns public evidence; they get routine-minded and
careless, and evidence and witnesses get away; drink loosens tongues; someone
breaks down under interrogation, if the police or whoever find who to
interrogate. The future may bring more news.".
  "It better be soon!" said another, "Enough men lost! Soon Hurlock's nine men
come out of prison, we'll see what <that>'ll cause around Crabhaven or wherever
they go.".